Acute hospital palliative care consults – where to from here?

Melbourne Hospital palliative care consultancy teams play a vital role in introducing palliative care services to acute hospital patients. Over recent years services have reached beyond the traditional oncology and end of life care model, striving to ensure that the palliative care approach is accessible to all hospital patients living with life‐threatening illness, despite diagnosis or medical unit. Austin Health is the major provider of tertiary health services in northeast Melbourne, operating 980 beds, with annual in‐patient admissions around 95,000. Referrals to the palliative care consult team have increased 100 % over the past 10 years (from 718 to 1456 per annum) reflecting the service’s ongoing promotion of the benefits of palliative care and early referral. The increasing utilisation of the consult team throughout Austin Health has required expansion of clinician EFT as well as careful future planning. The increased demand and workload has implications for resourcing, staffing, staff health and morale. This presentation will review our service data over the past 10 years with the aim of identifying referral trends, referring units, patient diagnoses, and discharge outcomes. By tracking demand and identifying areas of unmet need our service will be well placed to continue to grow into the future.